He sneered. "Ha! That was the worst ich I have ever heard. Your nicht sounded like a chihuahua trying to shit."

"Harumph" I grumbled, in my best English.

He chortled over his spanakopita. "Oh, you Englishy types with your thinking and your theories and your thumbs! But none of you can say ch!"

I shouted to a Scotsman across the room, easily identified through his kilt and tam o'shanter. "Hey Jock, wazzup!"

"Och, laddie..." he began.

"That's enough, thank you." I said, and turned back to the German chap. "See? English speakers can ach and och like the best of you."

"You're completely wrong!" he replied, with a directness the world so admires in his countrymen. "Any one can make a ch when it follows a nice rounded vowel like an ah or an oh. But not when it follows a delicate sound like an ee or an ih that you actually have to make with your mouth and not your throat already."

He had a point. One can sound consonants in different ways. Think of the humble L. It sounds a bit different when you use it to say line and when you use it to say hall. This is known as a "light-L" and a "dark-L" respectively. .

We English native speakers hear the two Ls as the same. Polish—a fiendishly complex tongue—actually uses separate letters for the two sounds. Natives of some other languages can struggle with one L, and not the other.

My husband, whom you may recall is Japanese, has mastered the light-L. I often hear him say a perfect let's take the lift, with none of the R/L confusion that afflicts speakers with an Asian mother tongue. Not so the dark-L. Should you meet him in a hotel, don't ask him where the ballroom is. Nor should you discuss the movie star, Errol Flynn. Nor require him to use the word uncontrollable.

Conversely, it's the light-ch that gives us English speakers trouble. We end up saying ich—a common sound in German—as an ish or an ick. It mainly occurs at the end of syllables. Which gave me an idea.

"OK, Mr. Gescheithosen. You may think you're pretty smart, with your lippy th at the beginning of words. So tell me. What do you enjoy at the end of a hard day?"

"A bath," he replied.

Except he didn't say bath. He said "bus".

"Perhaps you have a particularly nice ride home, so I'll allow that", I said. "But here comes the clincher. Say the word clothes...in one syllable!"

"Clozes." he fumed.

Others around him tried to help. "Clothis", interjected a lady from Berlin. A gent from Schwabing tried "Clodzes". A fine attempt came from a rural Rosenheimer with a "Clozzess".

Ha! Our Greek waiter merrily celebrated by putting his tongue up to his incisors and letting out a big "Thththththththth!" .

I joined him in a jolly "Ththththththththththth!", too. Soon, all the English speakers in the room pitched in with a nice big, long "Thththththththththththth!". Except for the Scotsman, who was arguing over his bill.

What does it take to unleash your indignation? Eight years ago, a calendar and a couple of beers did it for me.

It came to my attention that some busybody proclaimed the second Monday in January as National Clean Off Your Desk Day. This impertinence provoked me to declare the following day, January 13, The International Day to Bite Me.

The busybody in question was one Anna Chase Moeller, daughter of Bill Chase, who co-founded the Chase's Calendar of Events in 1957. Rumour has it that Anna helped in the family business, and in so doing, shared a desk with her father. As is the case with pretty much all entrepreneurs, forward-thinkers, creative personalities, and productive people of every stripe, the desk was a mess. In a snit, Anna declared National Clean Off Your Desk Day to humiliate her father's habits. Once a year, Bill was forced to sacrifice a day of personal productivity to appease his daughter, who no doubt could have worked on the goddamn kitchen table if the sight of actual work upset her so goddamn much. Neat-freaks have used it to shame us normal people ever since.

On Friday, August 13 1982, a sleepy Michigan woman found that her alarm clock had failed to ring. This set off a cascade of lateness and bad luck that hounded her throughout the day. The National Blame Someone Else Day commemorates her string of excuses and apologies. In truth, it should be National Blame Fate Day, since the mechanical failure likely had no human source. Unless it was the woman herself who failed to set the alarm on August 12—in which case we should celebrate National Sorry, It's My Own Damned Fault Day.

Who was this unfortunate woman? None other than a certain Mrs Anna Chase Moeller.

Clearly, this amounts to an abuse of privilege. Anna's way to vent petty annoyances was to declare a day after them, because in the days before the internet, she was one of the few who could. Well, two can play at that game now, eh?

By the authority vested in me by Typepad blogging software, Deutschland über Elvis declares The International Day to Bite Me 2017 open for all. The ritual Flipping of the Bird will take place across Germany and the rest of the world, perhaps flipped all the harder because it might occur over Friday drinks.

As you approach Stuttgart, the A8 Autobahn takes a precipitous dip. A big, menacing sign warns you that the speed limit is reduced to a lousy fifty miles an hour, under the headline Gefahr Danger Pericolo.

I drove past that sign weekly for two years, intrigued. The road connects Munich and Vienna with Strasbourg and Paris. Why would the authorities write a sign in German, English and Italian, and neglect French?

OK, I'm kinda slow. But many fellow English speakers assume that when you see an Ungerman word in German, it's been borrowed from English. Though less prone to lexicographical thievery than our own tongue, German has stolen quite a bit from west of the Rhein.

This adds une complication for those of us whose mother tongue doesn't inflect—that is, doesn't change grammatical rules depending on whether a noun is masculine, feminine, or neither.

All other things being equal, German assigns a neutral gender to nouns borrowed from a foreign tongue; das Sushi, das Curry, das Handy, das Big Mac. On the other hand, if a word sports a gender at the source, then it carries over into into German. Latin words hopped directly over the Alps into scientific usage without a detour into English; that's why der Radius looks butch, but das Radium sounds like it's had the snip.

Tricky for those words which come via English rather than from it. A credit card arrived this week and the issuing firm urged me to download die American Express App, turning this petite slice of software into a woman. I hadn't thought about it until an online pal prompted me to ask why it should be so. Surely, the term app came straight out of Silicon Valley. It ought to be gender neutral.

But Silicon Valley is fond of Latinate terms, which English sucked up from Norman French. La application enters German as feminine, die Application. This shortens into the rather girly term, die App.

So it didn't surprise me to overhear two bemused people in the supermarket, wondering aloud in German, whether the product pictured above was das Pain, or der Pain. And if the latter, should it not be im Bäckerei?

My husband, who you may recall is Japanese, thought this was a stupid name for a hot sauce, too.

In the Meiji era, Japan imported many exotic foods, along with the words to describe them. Sensibly, they chose most of their new Western diet from France—let's be honest, if you could choose among global cuisines, would you choose any from the English-speaking world? To him, pain (パン) will always mean bread, no matter how much American marketers boast of the agony their condiments inflict.

über me

Teaching the Germans to party since 2007. No, not that party.The Honourable Husband proudly proclaims himself to be stateless, rootless, godless and gay. A fiftyish American-Australian chap, recently posted from New York to Munich. He and his Japanese partner regularly discover new reasons to think the other odd.

Nach Links

My guide to the homosphere, including the blogs of quality queers. Be gay the Honourable way!

Coming out of the safety of the closet was easier for me than coming out of the mindwarp of the church. This page has plenty for the godless and groovy, including Mojoey's incomparable Atheist Blogroll.

People often ask about life as an expat. The experience is different for everyone. Here, you'll find stories and advice from my favourite modern-day immigrants.

The motto of a certain well-known advertising agency is Truth Well Told. The authors behind this link need no reminder that a well-told truth is powerful. They prove it. Of course, tales well woven, and jokes well cracked earn a berth here, too.

The online world will revolutionise social history. The stories of ordinary people were once hidden. Now, we can share them with the stroke of a key. Many bloggers (such as Neil Kramer and A Free Man) have encouraged their readers to interview each other, share their stories and record them for posterity. Here are the interviews I've participated in.

Bookage

Ayn Rand: Atlas Shrugged (Penguin Modern Classics)A user called Theta9 on LibraryThing summed it up. "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

Helen Garner: The Spare RoomThe people we love can be infuriating and self-destructive, especially when they're sick. How does a carer continue to care? This tale quietly rips your heart out. Nobody describes the minutiae of every day life with the same clarity and symbolic force which Garner brings.

Rudolph Herzog: Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler's GermanyThe author, son of film-maker Werner Herzog, traces the jokes people told abou the Nazis in order to prove that most people knew the nature of the regime. To me, this slender collection of political humour shows that there simply weren't enough jokes cracked, not that there lots of sly jokes which showed a public spirit of resistance. The funniest and cruellest jokes, ironically, often came from Hitler's victims themselves.

Sean Condon: My 'dam Life: Three Years in Holland (Lonely Planet Journeys)Sean has an ear for the cadences of modern, media-warped speech. He has a heart for the subtle humiliations which life deals out to the ordinary bloke, and he retalliates by humiliating the famous in return. A genuine, new, and distinctive voice in literature. He's also a pal, so buy his books. A lot.

Bill Wasik: And Then There's ThisBoy, have I had it with Tipping Points, Flat Worlds, and anything 2.0. So imagine my delight when one of these so-called business books turns out to be a gem. Wasik is a gentleman adventurer in the world of new media. An amateur pundit with a day job as a rock journalist, he dips a toe in the water of viral culture every so often, and manages to beat the pros. He was, after all, the man who invented the flash-mob. Name one other writer on cyberculture who starts his book by quoting John Stuart Mill. That's class.

Thomas Doherty: Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934 (Film and Culture Series)It was six years between the birth of the talkies and the enactment of the draconian MPAA Production Code in 1934. But in those few short years, Hollywood relased some of the most subversive, racy and cynical movies it would ever make. The parallels with our own time, as the forces of censorship stir again, are frightening. the cover shows ten items which the Production Code would never allow. Among them, an inner thigh, wickedness unpunished, drug use, consumption of alcohol that is not essential to the plot and the mockery of religion. I ask you: what's left that's worth making movies about?

P.J. O'Rourke: Republican Party ReptileO' Rourke says he's a Republican, but he appears on NPR. A (political) party animal. His viewpoints, in large measure, suck. But I bet he mixes a mean Gimlet.

Mary Karr: The Liars ClubLike Nick Flynn, another poet tells her tale of childhood neglect and abuse. The portrait she paints of her star-crossed parents, held together by lust and divided my tragedy, will bring you to tears.

Nick Flynn: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A MemoirHow does it affect your soul, if you're working in a homeless shelter, and your dad checks in? And you have to throw him out for bad behaviour? A gut-wrenching tale of family dysfunction, emotional torture, and (yes) vanity. Flynn is a poet, and he tells his tale in a way that's morbidly beautiful.

Muriel Spark: The Prime of Miss Jean BrodieThe relationship between a gifted student and a truly inspiring teacher is an intimate one. So intimate, the student and teacher can resemble two lovers, with their intrigues, passions, and potential for betrayal. Spark's cool, detatched style is at odds with the simmering emotion that runs through this tale of adolescent self-discovery. It makes her story all the more heartbreaking. A masterpiece.

Mark Leyner: My Cousin, My GastroenterologistDali once described surrealism as the chance meeting of a fish and an anvil on an ironing board. As a modern surrealist, Leyner provides plenty of anvils, but the fish are somehow missing. A dozen eskimos in bowler hats have just rung the doorbell, and I must get my llama to make them hot fudge sundaes. Do I make myself clear?

Dana Thomas: Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its LusterA staggeringly well-written book from a former Washington Post fashion correspondent. The many hundreds of billions of dollars which passes through the hands of the luxury goods industry has not trickled-down to the people who actually do the work. Once proud brands tarnish their reputations by badge-engineering. A merciless expose of luxury marketing, but one which respects the artisanal ideals which spawned the industry in the first place.

Gore Vidal: Myra Breckinridge & MyronToday, Vidal concentrates on scathing essays and scandalous memoir. But you'll find his best work in his early satires. Myra Breckenridge tells the story of a ball-busting post-op transexual woman who wreaks revenge on the millieu of B-list celebs and wannabes who spurned her as a man. This short book carries not an ounce of fat; every word packs a punch. It is, without doubt, his masterpiece. The sequel, Myron, runs longer, and is just a little too aware of its own cleverness. Irritated at a Supreme Court decision on censorship, Vidal replaces each of the proscribed nine dirty words with the names of the Justices themselves. Oddly, the judges all seem to sport names which suit the purpose. I am especially fond of the name for a vulgarity which refers to the female genitalia; Justice Whizzer White.

Michael Heyward: The Ern Malley AffairThis is so post-modern, it makes your head spin. In 1940s Australia, two would-be poets Harold Stewart and James McAuley grew tired of rejections from avant-garde literary journals. As a lark, the two composed what they thought was were silly parodies of the prevailing modernist school, and submitted them under an assumed name to Angry Penguins, a new journal published by the Adelaide dandy Max Harris. Harris said they were brilliant. The (real) authors revealed that the poems were frauds. Or were they still brilliant, even if the poets responsible never intended them to be? A fascinating artistic morality tale, which still stirs arguments in Australian academic circles.

Robert Whiting: You Gotta Have WA (Vintage Departures)Prospective expats often ask me for tips on doing business in Japan. This book, which tells the story of American baseball players recruited to Japanese clubs in the eighties, proved the single most useful guide to how a Japanese organisation works. Richard Whiting is a sportswriter who has spent most of his career in Japan, and carved a niche for himself explaining the curiosities of Japanese team sports. Check out his most famous work, The Chrysanthemum and the Bat.

Alice Miller: The Body Never Lies: The Lingering Effects of Cruel ParentingI have suffered through endless therapy sessions, support groups, and self-help books which proclaim the abused must forgive their oppressors in order to find peace. Alice Miller calls bullshit on this quatsch, and shows that victims make better progress if they do NOT forgive their abusers. I concur.

Resistance is Useful

It's on again! Is someone dicking you around? Is your day filled with petty people tut-tutting you at every turn? Through no fault of your own, do you find yourself marching to someone else's tune? Strike back against the petty tyrants and oxygen thieves. For one day, let them kiss your sweet, fragrant buttcheeks. The Honourable Liberation Front has declared January 13 to be the Fourth Annual International Day to Bite Me. Join the movement, here!

To Elvis fans, schade.

Sorry to disappoint, but Deutschland über Elvis, is not an Elvis Presley fansite. The title is a pun on the German national anthem, Deutschland uber Alles. Presley fans curious about his G.I. stretch in Germany (1958-1960) should click on the photo above and buy
The Ultimate Elvis in Munich, by Andreas Roth. The book contains some extraordinary photos, and the story of a rumoured Munich mistress.